HC slams SEC for polls in Covid time

Asks SEC if ‘heavens will fall’ if polls are put off

The decision to hold elections in these tense Covid19 times is tantamount to a walk into the jaws of death, the Telangana High Court opined on Thursday. It criticised the State Election Commission (SEC) for going ahead with the election process in the municipal corporations of Greater Warangal and Khammam as also five municipalities.

A division bench of Chief Justice Hima Kohli and Justice B. Vijaysen Reddy asked the SEC whether sky would fall if the elections were postponed.

“If you are so bent on clinging to your tasks, wasn’t there any delay in conducting elections on time? Wasn’t there any situation when a local body was administered by the special officer for the interim? We all witnessed that the state capital’s Mayor post was not filled for more than a year and a half without conducting GHMC elections even when there was no Corona or a calamity. But, at the time of the serious surge in Covid-19 cases in the state, you rushed to conduct elections as if the sky will otherwise fall down. This was not a calibrated decision, whatever the reasons be,” the bench told SEC secretary Ashok Kumar. He appeared before the court on its direction to explain the reasons for conducting the elections in Covid times.

The bench asked SEC why it didn’t stall the elections or postpone them by exercising the power vested in it under the statute, keeping in view the surge in Covid-19 cases.

Chief Justice Kohli said the SEC has not only put the lives of the voters as also of 7,695 government employees and 2,557 police personnel to risk.

The Chief Justice said that current situation reminded the court of the poem penned by Alfred Lord Tennyson titled ‘Charge of the Light Brigade’, wherein the British Cavalry Unit, the Light Brigade comprising 600 soldiers, was directed to charge against the enemy even as such an act was suicidal and a blunder. It rode them into the jaws of death.

When Ashok Kumar informed the division bench that these elections are only confined and restricted to two municipal corporations and five municipalities, CJ Kohli cited the high number of

Covid-19 positive cases in these areas.

“The entire world knows of the war-like conditions going on since February 2021. Does the SEC not belong to this planet? You gave the Notification on April

16. Some of the municipalities’ terms have not been completed by March and mid-April. You have four months’ time to conduct elections. Is there such an urgency or statutory compulsion to hold a meeting of newly elected municipal councillors, as of a meeting of the Council of Ministers,” the CJ asked counsel.

The Bench observed that the municipal elections on April 30 when the entire state is gripped by Covid-19 is a deliberate and ironic decision of the SEC. “It has really botched up the situation. Warangal, Achampet, Rangareddy, Mahbubnagar, Nagarkurnool have seen a spurt in Covid19 cases. This is nothing but jeopardising the life of the citizens,” the court said and directed SEC to file a report by May 5.